“The parent and the child have many battles over homework. Parents fight about it, too – it creates family stress as well as child stress,” said Linda Cameron, an education professor at the University of Toronto.
Cameron and colleague Lee Bartel have been studying students’, teachers’ and parents’ ideas and perceptions about homework, and are assisting the school board in the development of a new homework policy.
In 2007, researchers surveyed more than 1,000 parents and caregivers and about 950 teachers in Canada. The results suggested significant problems with assigning homework, including the stress it places on family life and the overall health of children.
The study found about 28 per cent of parents of Grade 1 students, and more than 50 per cent of parents of Grade 2 students, think their child is assigned 20 minutes or more of homework a night.
Cameron and Bartel said if too much work is assigned, it cuts into children’s free time, which is used for other forms of development, such as hobbies, sports, arts, relaxation and family time.
Bartel said when parents perceive homework assignments as “busy work,” it exacerbates the problem. He used a situation from his own past, when he and his family lived in the United States, as an example.
“The ultimate for me was when my son in Grade 2 came home with a turkey to colour. Is that really worthwhile?” he told board trustees.
Bartel said the push for more homework started in the U.S. in the 1980s, and has since migrated to Canada. While the trend may have been to assign more homework, Cameron said studies haven’t shown it is beneficial, especially at young ages. The exception is reading.
One interesting statistic the study found, according to Bartel, was that teachers often view homework differently when they become parents themselves.
“Teachers who are also parents are less supportive of homework, are more mindful of the value of family time and more critical of homework their child’s teacher assigns,” he said.
Parents and students also complained homework is often only marked for completion, and not taken up or graded.
Researchers say that can lead students to become skeptical of the importance of homework, and can cause them to develop bad homework habits when they are older.
However, because teachers cannot always be sure of how much a parent was involved with the completion of a school project, it makes it problematic to assign grades, Bartel said.
The researchers said parents are also frustrated when homework requires intense parent supervision. Along with cutting into family time, it can disadvantage children whose parents are less educated or have a job with hours not conducive to school hours, such as shift work.
Innisfil trustee Donna Armstrong said she has heard complaints from parents about group assignments, especially in primary grades. She said the assignments often end with one or two parents taking the lead and ensuring work is completed.
“I know in university that is a very common practice,” she said. “That, to me, is probably the most harebrained idea in primary (grades).”
While Bartel and Cameron said group work is a key component in student development, they said it works better in a structured place, such as the classroom, and not as an after-school assignment. They added it is a bigger problem in rural areas than in urban centres with public transit.
The school board is planning to use the data in the development of its own homework policy.
kelsner@simcoe.com
